Sign of the Times

Phone app texts waiting patrons

NoWait hopes to take off with $2 million in funding and a good idea- keep restaurants from losing business by allowing people to wait wherever they want.

The hosting management system aspires to replace traditional restaurant pagers by sending customers texts with wait times and notifications, letting people know via cellphone when their table is ready.

The iPad app also offers restaurants analytics to help establishments monitor and better their customer experience. As our lives become more dominated by our smart phones, businesses have also turned to the mobility and convenience of using tablets.

Barley Swine is currently the only Austin restaurant using the app; a very appropriate starting point for the company, being that the gastro pub is quite the hotspot and is usually very busy. The app is free for the iPhone or iPod user and is $60-200/month for restaurant hosts (depending on the number of parties served in a month).

The Pittsburgh-based company currently doesn't offer the app to Android users, but says that extending the service is in the works.